This is a notebook of projects I attempt with a Raspberry Pi or wearable technology

About me

In the photo I am in the blue blouse. It's taken on the famous little railway to Shimla. I'm a Code Club volunteer and love messing about with computing and particularly coding in Scratch. I want to get into 'maker' stuff using my Raspberry Pi but I'm a complete newbie. I am learning a bit about electronic making by going to Leeds Raspberry Jam once a month. I'm looking to do a robot project with the Raspberry Pi Zero in the future. I've just started an adventure to code wearable LEDs using an Adafruit Gemma. And I've been lucky to have been given a CodeBug so I'm learning to use that too!

Gemma wearables starter pack – 2

I had a little difficulty beginning coding the Gemma because after following Christine Tee’s instructions here: #4: Working on Gemma… part 1 I couldn’t see what I needed on the Arduino 1.6.4 code editor. I work in Windows 7 by the way.

Now open the arduino – 1.6.4 folder to find the arduino coding application file.

(If your files are in ‘Details’ view, you need to choose the file called arduino with the turquoise symbol of a – + in a figure of 8on its LHS and ‘application’ in the ‘Type’ column on the RHS.)

arduino code editor screen

When you have opened arduino, you then have to set some ‘Tools‘ items.

In ‘Tools‘ you need to choose the Board:

Adafruit Gemma 8MHz

and the programmer: USBtinyISP (I’m not sure why.)

Then in File -> Examples I didn’t have the option Adafruit NeoPixel so I couldn’t get any further. Groan!

Next day

But then Christine gave me the instructions to add NeoPixel to the Arduino library and she’s now put them in the blog post mentioned above. It’s complicated because I put Arduino 1.6.4 in the Libraries-> Documents -> Anne -> Code Club folder that I usually use for all my computing work. However, Christine said I needed to put the Adafruit Neopixel folder in C:\Users\Anne\Documents\Arduino\libraries , where the program files, from any code I write, goes.

Here are her full instructions in case you need them too:

Christine Tee

“If you have the black Gemma, you should choose Adafruit Gemma 8MHz. Also if you don’t see the Adafruit Neopixel on your Arduino 1.6.4, do the following: